| Ultra Products 2nd Generation X-Finity 600W PSU
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Testing:
Testing the Second Generation 600W Xfinity Power Supply will be focused on determining how much the main voltage rails (+5V, +12V, and 3.3V) fluctuate from idle conditions to full load conditions. A Radio Shack multi-meter (Cat. No. 22-810) was used to record all voltage readings. The sleek FlexForce cables presented an unexpected problem during testing... identifying what wires to tap in order to take the various readings. With all of the wires being silver, I had to reference another power supply to see which position on the motherboard connector would typically be red, yellow, orange, and black.
For a point of reference, two other power supplies will be run through the same set of tests; the Enermax Liberty 500W, and the first generation Ultra Products X-Finity 600W. The comparison between the two generations of the same device should be interesting, and the inclusion of the Enermax unit will provide a good reference to one of the more popular units on the market today.
The idle condition was established by powering the base system at default speeds and voltages with no applications running for a period of at least 30 minutes. The load condition was established by loading the system up with components and fans, while Folding@Home and SiSoft Sandra 2005's Burn-in Wizard ran for a period of at least 60 minutes. In addition to these stressful applications running, the loaded system was overclocked and overvolted to add more demand to the power supply. The table below details the idle and load conditions:
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Idle
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Load
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AMD Athlon-64 3200+ processor @ 2000MHz (stock voltage)
ASUS A8N-E nForce4 Ultra motherboard
2048MB PC3200 Kingston HyperX DDR @ 2.6V
1x 500GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA 3Gbps hard drive
Gigabyte Radeon X600XT PCIe card
Fans: 1x120mm, 1x80mm
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AMD Athlon-64 3200+ processor @ 2300MHz (+0.25V)
ASUS A8N-E nForce4 Ultra motherboard
2048MB PC3200 Kingston HyperX DDR & 2.8V
1x 500GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA-II hard drive
1x 500GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps hard drive
2x 200GB Seagate 7200.8 SATA hard drives
Gigabyte Radeon X600XT PCIe card
Fans: 2x120mm, 4x80mm
Cooler Master Aerogate
1x USB TV tuner (powered by USB bus)
2x USB thumb drives
1x USB hard drive
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The first thing we will look at is how the second generation X-Finity 600W unit's voltage rails fluctuated between idle and load conditions. During the readings the numbers fluctuated a bit and I had to use my best judgement to determine what number might represent the best value. The fluctuations weren't excessive (generally a few hundredths of a volt), but the numbers were not rock solid. Checking out the Enermax review will reveal that it is possible for a unit to not flinch when going from idle to load, but that wasn't the case with wither X-Finity unit. The chart below summarizes the readings...
The readings are respectable, and well within the generally acceptable range of +/-5% of specification, but the Enermax unit offered less "bouncy" readings.
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